Savage Vandal (82 Street Vandals Book 1)

by Heather Long

  “Eric?”

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “He’ll never touch you again. You can forget him.”

  Fear shivered through me, and something a lot darker. “Is he still alive?”

  He trailed the finger down to my throat, and my heart grew a bit more frantic at the contact. “Do you really care?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “He blames me for being here.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “I’d really rather not,” I retorted, and a smile curved Jasper’s lips. It was the first real grin I thought I’d ever seen from him. It softened his entire expression and transformed it. I clenched as liquid heat pooled between my thighs, and fuck me, wanting any of these guys was the worst idea.

  Wrapping his hand around my nape, Jasper stroked his thumb against the base of my skull, and my pulse began to rabbit. “He hurt you.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to answer.

  “We know about the bones. The bruises. The violence.”

  I still didn’t respond.

  “Did he do anything else?”

  “Why?” I was so proud of my voice for not coming out tremulous or weak.

  “Because every fucking thing he’s ever done to you, I’m going to visit on him three-fold. He’s going to suffer for hurting you.”

  Holy.

  Shit.

  “You’re torturing him?” My nipples tightened, and I swore I had to keep still or I’d have rubbed my thighs together.

  Jasper studied me for a long moment, then he gave the barest pressure and I tilted my head back, well aware I was baring my throat. Everything about this was wrong. I should take a step back. Put more distance between us. But I didn’t fucking want to.

  “The idea of me torturing him turns you on,” Jasper murmured. “Doesn’t it?”

  I licked my dry lips, and his gaze seemed riveted to the action. Fuck it, what could a little truth hurt? “I hate him.”

  “What did he do to you, baby?” The soft croon of his voice seeped in to me and prodded more truths loose from the gnarled knot I kept hidden away, but they wouldn’t part so easily. Some were glued. Some were stuck with rubber bands. Others were plastered and soaked in blood.

  “It doesn’t matter… If you’re serious that he’ll never leave here alive.”

  His nostrils flared. No, he hadn’t told me he was going to kill him. I just…

  “He won’t be.”

  Fuck.

  I closed my eyes at the very real sense of relief flooding through me. Never having to worry about him grabbing me. Banging on my door. Forcing his way inside.

  Never having to put on a happy face or smile as he touched me.

  Breath feathered over my lips, and the faint notes of tobacco, coffee, and, of all things, maple syrup teased my senses, along with the very distinct scent of Jasper. “What did he do to you, baby?”

  The words clawed at the back of my throat, and I shook my head. The snap of the band pulled them back, and I opened my eyes to find Jasper staring down at me, barely a breath between us. The heat coming off him competed with the fire burning inside of me.

  “I don’t want to talk about him.” I couldn’t. “Please don’t make me.”

  My voice cracked on that last part, and Jasper’s whole expression grew fierce and furious. Dammit. I pulled away from him, or tried to, but I barely made it a step before he yanked me back around and I collided with his chest. A moment later, his mouth was on mine, and the hot demand of his tongue sliding between my lips exploded through the sadness, the confusion, and the pain.

  Hard and firm, he moved his lips like it was a massage. His beard tickled my face, and his hands were hot where they rested on me. Seemingly of their own accord, my arms wrapped around his neck. For a moment, one long moment, Jasper broke the contact and lifted his head. I couldn’t read his expression. The intensity of it and the rawness of emotion in his eyes—the anger. It was…it was like someone had lit a match.

  Then his mouth claimed mine again, and there was no room for thought as he slid his hands to my ass and dragged me upward so my face was level with his and my breasts crushed against his chest. Hot laving strokes of his tongue interspersed with nibbling bites on my lips. The pressure and the pace changed second to second.

  I was fucking dizzy from the contact as he kneaded my ass with his firm, hot fingers, and I locked my thighs to his hips and ground against the very thick erection straining his jeans. A moan tore out of my throat as he pushed me back against the wall, and then he had a hand on my chest, teasing and tweaking the nipple through my leotard. I raked my fingers through his hair. I swore he sought to devour me as he demanded more and more in the kiss.

  And fuck me if I wasn’t giving it to him.

  A moment later, I was on my feet and leaning against the wall as Jasper backed up and glared at me, blazing hot daggers in his eyes.

  What the fuck?

  A fist slammed against the door in a hard cadence of knocking. “Open the fucking door, Hawk,” Kestrel called. “We have a problem.”

  Jaw clenched, Jasper suddenly thrust a water bottle at me. His tone was almost as scathing as his eyes as he raked his gaze over me. All at once, I was too exposed, too…vulnerable

  “Go back to your room and take a shower. Stay there until someone comes for you.” Then he was walking away and jerking the door open. I didn’t hear what was said as he exited, only caught Freddie’s wince as he peeked inside.

  “Come on, Boo-Boo,” he murmured in an almost sympathetic voice. “I’ll walk you up. Don’t mind Jasper. I swear he tested anal out with real wood at some point and it left splinters behind.”

  The joke should have been funny, but I couldn’t laugh.

  What the fuck just happened?

  I’d climbed him like a pole, but he’d kissed me first.

  Right?

  Chapter 20

  Kellan

  “What?” Jasper demanded as he stalked out of the studio. Rage radiated off him, and I spared a look at Emersyn’s profile and curled my fingers into a fist. She had her face away from us, but her shoulders rolled forward. Freddie leaned against the wall, and I jerked my head back toward the room. While he was not our first pick for babysitting duty, we didn’t have much choice. We were running thin on people we could leave her with, and right now, we would need our heavy hitters out there.

  “19 Diamonds,” I told Jasper as I pushed open the door to the main warehouse. The layout put several layers of protection between the possibility of drive-bys and where we slept. Right now, it also put several layers between Emersyn and the people trying to hurt her. Something we were supposed to be working on and had done absolutely nothing about.

  As much as I hated to admit it, that was tomorrow’s problem. Today’s waited for us, armed, furious, and barely restrained.

  He was also not alone.

  “What the fuck do they want?” The question required no answer. We still had their boy in the fridge. He wouldn’t be leaving either. First, he’d been planning to hurt Emersyn, that alone was enough to earn him a bullet, but he and his crew had been in our territory. That meant we needed to know what else they were planning.

  Wallace Meeks was an enforcer for the 19 Diamonds, their third-in-command. Sending him made sense. At six foot two, two hundred and twenty-five pounds, he was nothing but solid muscle and stubborn strength. He was good with knives and guns. I had more than one scar from that fucker. At one point, he’d had ash blond hair, but he started shaving his head and we hadn’t seen his hair in a while. The tattoos crawling up his neck were starting to find purchase on his bare scalp.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Deuce?” Jasper’s tone was five different kinds of unfriendly, and not for the first time, I was glad for the Glock tucked into the holster at the small of my back. The brass knuckles in my pocket would come in handy too.

  Jasper always had a gun on him. Always. Even when I couldn’t see his weapons, he had them tucked away. He strode across to where the enfor
cer waited with two guys to back him up. Rome and Liam were there, both stoic with unreadable expressions, but Vaughn squared up, toe-to-toe with Meeks. He was bigger than Meeks by maybe five pounds. Didn’t matter, I’d seen Vaughn take down bigger guys.

  “Get your pet dog off me,” Meeks warned.

  “I asked you a question,” Jasper stated, ignoring Meeks’ comment. He didn’t repeat it, just stared at the other man, flat-eyed and expressionless. While Meeks was in my line of sight, I kept my focus on the two punks he’d brought with him. I didn’t know either one.

  While that didn’t mean much, my job wasn’t tracking 19 Diamonds recruitment, the fact they had a lot of new blood like the assholes who went after Emersyn and these guys didn’t bode well for us.

  “Where are my boys?” Meeks demanded.

  Jasper shrugged. “Do I look like their keeper?” He didn’t ask who or even affect any kind of interest in who he was discussing.

  “Don’t get that attitude with me,” Meeks snarled as he went to step forward and got bodychecked by Vaughn. I didn’t go for my gun, though the two lumps with Meeks twitched like they were reaching. Lump number one with the scar over his eye was carrying on his left. Lump number two, who looked like he should be in science class or some shit at the high school rather than here, had his in the front of his pants.

  Dumbass needed to learn you didn’t put a gun where your dick lay. That was a fast way to lose it. Course, the kid wasn’t long for this world, dickless or not, running with Meeks. The fucker burned through fresh blood like a player at a virgin prom.

  “My guys headed down here yesterday, and they didn’t come back.”

  “If your boys got lost in our territory, that’s not my problem. The fact you sent them into our territory is about to be your problem.” Jasper sounded almost bored.

  Dickless and Lumpy twitched. They really did want to go for their guns. The air reeked of violence, along with the hint of marijuana and liquor. Drugs were a no fly for the Vandals. Not even the rats touched the stuff. Not if they wanted to stay. Some rules were hard and fast, set in blood.

  We controlled the distribution in our area and monitored who brought what in as a way to make sure it stayed out of the hands of kids, and it also gave us a line on the junkies who were a little too liberal with their violence. That was a no go here too.

  Dickless shifted his weight, and then his hazy gaze snagged on mine. Sweat beaded along his forehead, and he kept licking his lips like they were too dry. Lumpy wasn’t doing much better. They were both a little strung out, and Dickless was coming down.

  Idiots.

  Liam stretched.

  Fucking stretched.

  And all hell broke loose.

  Vaughn had Meeks down in two seconds. He and Jasper could handle the fuck no issues, but Rome startled because wound or no wound, he pounced on Lumpy like a man on a mission.

  There were cleaner ways to do this, but Rome was a flurry of hits and wild violence. They’d come here looking for a fight, and he was all about giving it to them. Narrowing the gap between me and Dickless, I got my hand on his where he grasped the gun. Pain escaped his mouth as I gripped his fingers. One of them ground on that hand, and if he slipped his finger a little lower, he’d be on the trigger.

  The gun barrel though? It was firmly against his dick. His back slammed into the wall, and my fingers bit into his shoulder before the knowledge fully registered. Rome was still kicking the absolute fuck out of Lumpy. At the rate he was going, Lumpy was going to be un-fucking-recognizable.

  Vaughn wrenched Meeks to the ground with Jasper, so they were no help. I cut a look to Liam, who stood there with a faint smirk on his face as Rome all but curb stomped the guy.

  The rats present weren’t gonna intervene, even if a couple of them already had guns out. Goddammit, when did those two start carrying pieces?

  “Liam,” I snarled, and the other man glanced from his twin to me. Blankness rapidly overtook his more bloodthirsty expression, and he let out a sigh like I was asking for a lot. But he caught his brother’s arm as Rome lifted his foot to stomp on the guy’s leg. Lumpy wasn’t moving anymore, and fuck if I knew whether he was still breathing. Gripping Rome’s arm, he dragged his blood-spattered twin away from the body.

  “Fuck, if you guys killed him—” Dickless didn’t finish the thought, because I had my finger between the trigger and the guard so he couldn’t pull it and shoot himself in the groin. As funny as it would be to see the idiot get what he deserved, I didn’t feel like cleaning up another body.

  I slammed my knee right into the gun, which drove the metal into his dick. The 19 Diamond let out a whimpering gasp of sound that I cut off by yanking the gun out of his pants then backhanding him with it.

  The rats scrambled when I pointed to the downed man as I turned to face Meeks. He was on the ground, his arm locked back into a painful position as Vaughn kept him pinned in place, one knee between his shoulder blades.

  Jasper squatted in front of him. “You used to be smart,” he told him.

  “I didn’t fucking tell him to make a move,” Meeks grunted out.

  “Not my problem,” Jasper informed him in an ice-cold voice he reserved purely for business. “Or it wasn’t, until you made it mine. We have rules, Deuce. Rules that you don’t break unless you want us to retaliate.”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t tell him to make a move. I’m here for my guys, nothing else.”

  I checked the weapon. One in the chamber. Clip with sixteen shots. They came armed for a fight. The rats on Dickless pulled another gun off him and a couple more knives. The second gun was smaller, but also loaded. The ankle holster made it a bitch to pull, so just a backup weapon.

  Liam had gone back to the blood stain his brother had made and removed weapons from him. At my look, Liam pressed two fingers to the guy’s neck, then nodded.

  Thank fuck. One less body to get rid of.

  “Jasper—” Meeks cut off on a pained snarl as Vaughn tightened the arm bar. Any second, there was going to be a crack of a bone or a tear in the other man’s shoulder. Our bodies weren’t meant to contort like that.

  All of a sudden, an image of Emersyn rolled through my head. She bent and twisted as she wound her way up the silks. The dancing had been one thing, but the moment she’d dropped from the ceiling, suspended only by her skill and a pair of silk that could tear at any second, my breath had been lodged in my throat.

  I couldn’t count the number of videos I’d watched of her performing in the last few years. She’d always been something else, but she’d also been a kid. A beautiful, talented kid.

  The woman suspended above me caught not only my eyes, but my imagination. I’d been with her for days, looking after her. Right there at my fingertips was everything I never thought about before. We’d come to look after a kid, but she wasn’t a child. She was everything I thought she’d be and nothing like I’d dreamed. Real. Raw. Visceral.

  Hot.

  Passion incarnate.

  Fucking beautiful.

  “Hawk…” Meeks’ strained voice drove the sexy image out of my head, and I blew out a breath. The last thing I needed was a fucking hard-on dealing with these assholes. Especially when the little sparrow was right there and a thousand miles away at the same time. “You have my word, we didn’t come here for a fight. I just wanted to pick up my boys. They were talking shit, and I didn’t hear about it until too late.”

  “So you come here making demands?” Jasper asked him, still squatted in front of the other man. He had his hunting knife out. We’d seen one of those blades in a movie when we were kids, and it was all Jasper talked about for three months until Raptor stole one for him.

  We’d cut our fingers and sealed our blood pact the same night with that knife.

  “I just want my boys.”

  “You know the penalty for breaking the treaty. You gonna pay the price?”

  “Blood for blood,” Meeks answered.

  “That’s right,” Jasper
sounded almost pleased. “Your boys are done. You need to forget about them.”

  Because the one who had survived wouldn’t be long for this world. They tried to attack Emersyn. Bad enough they’d wandered into our territory. Touching her signed their death warrants.

  Even if Rome made sure their hands hadn’t landed on her.

  The experience had left another mark on her. She already carried far too many.

  “They were acting on their own,” Meeks said as Vaughn relaxed the pained hook of his arm, but he didn’t release him. “They weren’t under orders.”

  “Fine,” Jasper said with a faint smile that held far more malice than it did friendship or acceptance. “But you coming here, orders or not, that does violate our agreements.”

  Meeks exhaled raggedly, but he didn’t argue.

  “I’m willing to work with you, but not without compensation. You made a mess in here, interrupted my day, and generally pissed me off.” Jasper ticked the items off like he dictated a shopping list. Meeks had to hear it. Whatever was going to happen would happen, the level of pain would be determined by how cooperative he was.

  The last thing we needed was a street fight with the 19 Diamonds. We could take them, but it would be a bloody, costly fight.

  Jasper lifted his chin, and Vaughn released the other man, muscles tensing and flexing in his arms as he straightened. Tempers were running high across the board. Rome might be still, but he had his gaze pinned to the downed Lumpy like he was still picturing taking him apart. Liam stood between his twin and the other man’s death.

  Dickless was still out, but the rats holding him weren’t being gentle, and he was going to wake up with more bruises than he’d had when I knocked his ass out. Meeks’ face was ruddy from pain and exertion, sweat slicked his skin, and even without Vaughn holding him, he had the sense to not rise off the ground.

  Still playing with the knife, Jasper studied Meeks. I’d give Deuce credit, he didn’t beg.

  “Blood for blood,” Meeks said finally, agreeing to the penalty.

  “Spread your hands out on the floor.”